How sweet it is, out in the field, at the end of the long summer afternoons! The sun is no longer raging at you; and the woods are beginning to throw long blue shadows over the stubble fields where the olden shocks are standing. The sky is cool, and you can see the pale half-moon smiling over the monastery in the distance.
And you take your rosary out of your pocket, and get in your place in the long file, and start swinging homeward along the road with your boots ringing on the asphalt and deep, deep peace in your heart! And on your lips, silently, over and over again, the name of the Queen of Heaven, the Queen also of this valley: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee..." And the Name of her Son for Whom all this was made in the first place, for Whom all this was planned and intended, for Whom the whole of creation was framed, to be His Kingdom. "Blessed it the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus!"
"Full of grace!" The very thought, over and over, fills our own hearts with more grace: and who know what grace overflows into the world from that valley, from those rosaries, in the evenings when the monks are swinging home from work!
Mornings with Thomas Merton
Readings and Reflections
Selected by John C. Blattner
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Spring, 2009
